


A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

by stele3



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Creepy creatures, M/M, Slash, offscreen non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:51:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My contribution to the Jake Earle universe, created by onelittlesleep. Future-fic, in which Dean Winchester is in his 50's and winds up saddled with a little shit-kicking punk hunter with a dark past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

_Tell me where have you been, my blue-eyed son?_  
 _Where have you been, my darling young one?_  
\-- Leon Russell

The only reason (or reason _s_ , two of ‘em) Dean remembers the conversation later is the presence of breasts. Big, round, fluffy breasts filling out a demure sweater.

They drive through Franklin on a low idle. A job done and they’re in no hurry, so Dean slows the truck to a crawl as the Sunday morning flock does their flocking. Away to his left looms a huge structure more like a sports arena than a church, what Jake calls “Fort God” with a quirk of the mouth that almost makes Dean run over a nice young couple.

Jake laughs and goes back to picking dirt or something from underneath his toenail. He’s shucked his boots and has the cuffs of his jeans rolled up around his ankles. They spent the night before slopping around in a bog, looking for the bones of a Civil War veteran who kept killing tourists born anywhere north of Virginia.

They’re almost through the crowd when Jake suddenly sits up straight, his attention out the window. “Sheee–it, slow down. Slow the fuck down, Dean.”

Dean tosses him an irritated glare. “I’m going at about five miles per hour, kid, you want me to put it in reverse?”

His voice trails off a bit at the end, ‘cause he looks out and sees the breasts, too. The woman attached to them hustles along the sidewalk and crosses the street just in front of the car, moving fast enough to make every bounce of her sizable tits visible through her conservative sweater. The truck’s cab fills with reverential silence as Dean and Jake’s heads track in unison.

When she’s lost in the crowd, Jake lays back against the seat, grinning wide. “That right there is a thing of beauty, friend.”

Dean taps his sunglasses and says, “I’d kneel at _that_ altar.”

The kid laughs low and appreciative, gets settled back in place. “My momma had tits big as those,” he comments offhand, flicking dried bog slime from his ankle.

Dean stares at him, weirded out on several different levels. The kid’s never mentioned family except for his dad, the Great White Hunter Caleb Earle. “What?” he asks when he finally notices Dean’s stare. “She did! Damn near suffocated every time she gave me a hug.”

“She dead?” Dean isn’t sure why he asks. He sure as shit isn’t going to share about _his_ family. But the kid’s stretched out, hair falling in his eyes, so he asks.

“Yeah,” Jake answers, frowning at his foot in thought. “Died when I was eight or so, heart attack. M’brothers were both old enough to hunt, so Dad and them would leave me home alone. Sucked like hell… I’d be tearing strips off the damn walls by the time they got back.”

Brothers, two of them. Hell, the little bastard had a whole tribe. “If everybody in your family’s a hunter, how come I got stuck training your sorry ass?”

It’s there and gone so fast, practically subliminal. Just a flicker of electricity over the kid’s face and then he grins. “Shit, Dean. Dad always said my balls were bigger than my brain. I got to about fourteen before he gave up on me.”

Which jives with what Dean had always figured, what between the massive chip on the kid’s shoulder and regular fucks from a guy old enough to _be_ his father. That’s a thought Dean doesn’t like to follow too far, so he shoves the whole conversation in a mental box labeled “Daddy Issues” and mostly forgets it.

 

-o-

 

They’re in Oregon about a month later, some dirt-dry road heading down toward Nevada. Jake’s hair has gone stiff with dust and he stares out over the brush land with accusatory eyes. “Goddamn. I thought Oregon was supposed to be all rainy ‘n’ shit.”

Dean picks up the water bottle from between his knees, takes a swig of warm liquid. “Just along the coast. Most of the East is desert or forest. Nothing but ranchers this side of the mountains.”

Jake groans, hauls off his sweat-stained shirt, tosses it in a ball to the floor. Dean opens his mouth to bitch about that but then the kid resettles with sunglasses on his face and knees propped against the dashboard. He’s got a bruise on his left side and he tests it with a wince. Lays his hand comfortably atop his bare stomach.

Dean almost drives off the road. The kid’s laughter rings as Dean corrects the veer and then he’s right there, sliding a sweat-slick hand on the back of Dean’s neck and making him shiver in the heat. “Pull over, friend. There ain’t nothing out here but what walks on four legs.”

The truck slows but the kid doesn’t wait. Before it even stops he’s rising to hook a knee over Dean’s thighs and settle with his back to the wheel. When they come to a complete stop he slides with the motion, his pelvis snugging up close. Denim rubs together and Dean groans. But damned if he’s gonna let some punk kid fuck him senseless. He slides a hand between them to cup Jake’s hardened cock through his jeans. 

The heat’s got them both at a steady broil already, but it jumps a notch as Jake groans and pushes hard against Dean’s palm. Dusty hair falls and sticks to Dean’s cheek as the kid rests against his shoulder, breathing in fits and starts. Dean slides his other hand onto Jake’s back and the skin underneath his fingers ripples with scars: they’ve both taken their licks and know not to linger or ask about the healed flesh. An open mouth breathes moist against Dean’s ear as the kid rocks his hips into the hand covering him, saying low in his throat, “Yeah… yeah, right… fuck, Dean…”

Then Dean glances to his left out the window and stutters to a stop.

When he feels the change the kid straightens, follows his gaze. Away out in the brush, maybe two hundred feet from the road, hunkers an enormous wolf-like creature. Its large yellowish eyes are fixed on them and its mouth opens to reveal six-inch slathering fangs.

Jake comments very quietly, “Goddamn Peeping Tom wolf.”

“That’s our Fenrir beast.”

“Ya think?” The kid considers the massive paws and curved fangs. “Think it’ll wait ‘til we finish?”

In answer the beast snarls and launches itself forward, tearing across the earth. Dean throws the kid sideways across the front seat, himself on top, and scrabbles for the shotgun on the floor.

Later the kid’s too pissed off to care about blue balls. He grips the steering wheel and swears occasionally, still bare-chested. His shirt is now wrapped around Dean’s bleeding arm.

Still later, he stands between Dean’s knees with gauze in one hand and points with the other, jabbing a finger. “Don’t do that shit. Think I need a mother, huh? Someone to protect me, take the hit? Fuck you.” His blue eyes sizzle, furious.

Dean leans back in the chair. “Fine, fuck you too. Next time I’ll let it rip out your throat.” Jesus, _he’s_ the one bleeding here.

The kid swears again and throws the roll of gauze across the room. It hits a wall and bounces.

Dean never saw somebody take such powerful exception to _not_ having his neck torn open. But he chalks it up to adrenaline and frustration and, again, mostly forgets about it.

 

-o-

 

 _I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,_  
 _I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,_  
 _I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,_  
 _I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard._  
\-- Leon Russell

 

Texas in the early fall is lazy, hot days that leave all their clothes damp with sweat. Neither can stand the additional body heat so they sleep in separate beds, only touch in the shower with the faucet leaning towards C. A cascade of cool water keeps them from overheating, barely, and Dean takes the kid hard up against the damp wall, sends his fingers scrabbling along the tiles.

They’re looking into some kind of necromancy thing, a local Dark Lord wannabe luring illegals over the border for work, then killing them. The reanimated corpses are a bitch but fortunately the guy controlling them is just that, a guy. 

Jake surprises Dean by standing on a porch and speaking rapid Spanish with an old lady who crosses herself. Walking back to the truck the kid shrugs it off. “I was born ‘round here. Gotta know the lingo, gringo.” He grins sideways and Dean snorts.

 

When they walk into the barn outside town, six dead Mexican kids meet them. The necromancer, a husky guy in his forties with long stringy black hair, yells and the kids lurch forward, moving jerkily like the puppets they are. Dean shoots the first one in the face with salt, the next one with silver, not sure what kind of spell they’re dealing with. Neither go down. _Shit_. Jake moves away towards the necromancer, firing rapid, and Dean opens his mouth to order him back. But then a big sonofabitch is right in his face and he flings a bit of holy water. Does the trick, but he hasn’t exactly got a fire hose full of the stuff so he slides the shotgun down off his back and brings it to his shoulder in one fluid movement, fires into the fucker’s leg. That brings it down, hobbles it, but won’t stop them dead. Dead again. Whatever. Dean hates necromancers.

Abruptly Jake steps up right beside Dean and fires a crossbow into a lunging corpse. It flails, twists, and falls flat to the ground. Dean turns, about to ask what kind of bolt the kid used and where the Hell he pulled the crossbow from when he realizes the man standing beside him isn’t Jake. Not-Jake gives him a quick glance as he reloads and the flash of blue eyes makes Dean’s fingers stutter a moment as the guy aims and fires. Same stance, same movement. Same eyes. Different shoulders, taller, older.

There’s a shout and Dean looks up, sees Jake on the floor wrestling with another new arrival. He brings up the shotgun but then they roll over and the kid’s grinning wide and wild.

Outside in the sweltering night Jake introduces Dean to his brothers Jack, the wrestler, and Tom, who wears his crossbow slung on his back just like his youngest brother. There’s a pair of cousins, too, Sheryl and Preston. When Jake says “And this is Dean Winchester” a quick silence blossoms as all four stare at him with identical flame-blue eyes. It’s a bit unnerving.

Sheryl goes first, stepping forward to extend her hand. “My daddy talked about you… had a lotta respect for yah family,” she says in an accent thicker than Jake’s. She’s got dark hair and toned arms; but three heavily-armed male relatives stand right behind her. Dean takes her hand and looks nowhere but her eyes.

Jack, the oldest, punches Jake in the shoulder. “Goddamn you little pussy. Why the fuck didn’t yah give us a holler that y’re gonna be in town? C’mon, let yah big brother drink yah under.”

 

Dean wonders if there’s some kind of starter book he can buy. _Texan For Dummies_. Preston’s been talking to him for about ten minutes and Dean has no idea what they’re discussing. Sheryl finally saves him and apologizes that her brother gets “epizootics of the blowhole” when drunk. Dean blinks, chugs half of his fifth beer, and wearily waves the bartender over. 

On his other side Jack and Tom have Jake cornered. All three are smashed sloppy, relating recent adventures. Dean hears something about a “pervert wolf” and glances over in time to catch the quick look the kid sends him, sly and laughing. 

Dean sips his fresh beer and wonders how Jackie and Tom-boy would respond to finding out that their baby brother takes it up the ass from Dean Winchester. Despite all the sloppiness and loud laughter, Dean can see pure hunters lurking just below the surface. When a tray of glasses shatters, all four straighten lightning-quick, heads snapping to the sound.

Jake pauses mid-story, glances over and goes right on talking. Doesn’t even shift his weight.

That gets Dean’s attention. That and the way Tom, the second-oldest, looks at Jake with worry between his eyes. 

When Jake and Jack stagger outside to “york,” Dean turns to Tom and asks, “So does everybody in your family hunt?”

Tom straightens and nods, smiling blurry with pride. “Yeah. Family tradition… Sheryl and Preston’s dad, he got the two of them, then Aunt Marge, she’s got Nancy, Everett, Dylan, Anna and Earl.” He pauses, shakes his head. “Earl Earle. I still feel kinda bad for the kid.”

“So all your daddies and mommies taught you how to hunt?” Jack and Jake stagger in the door, holding their stomachs and wiping their mouths.

“Sumpin’ like that, yeah.”

Dean looks at Tom’s relaxed face and asks, “So why didn’t Caleb ever teach Jake?”

He watches as Tom’s pulls itself tight, sets in granite. “Guess he wanted to protect him. Baby of the family and all.”

Preston can’t be more than two years older than Jake. It’s a practiced excuse worn thin with repetition. But then Jake and Jack stumble back over with wide grins and flashing blue eyes. Dean goes back to his beer.

 

Jack insists on taking Jake to see their Aunt Marge. “She’d fuck me up if she heard that you were in-state and I didn’t drag yah by.” Then he bends over and yorks on his boots.

They’d been planning on a northbound route and Jake meets Dean’s eyes, shrugs. “I can meet up with yah.”

Dean grunts and Sheryl gives him her cell number in case they need to get in touch. Her eyes flicker at him and he thinks maybe the night wasn’t a total loss.

On the car ride back to the motel Dean looks over to study the kid’s broad shoulders and stocky limbs. A bit short, but strong enough. Stubborn, but that’s a benefit more often than not. Not brain-dead… his Spanish hadn’t faltered once. Hell, even Preston, who Dean is certain has a negative IQ, got trained in the Earle Family Hunter Factory.

Jake murmurs in his drunken stupor and Dean keeps his thoughts to himself. Sets it aside.

 

Sheryl and Preston come by the next morning to pick up Jake and his duffel bag, dragging the kid out slung between them. Dean is already up, packed with the brevity of light travel.

On the ride, he plays Metallica loud and doesn’t miss the kid’s presence, not at all. Not one bit. He laughs at himself, wonders when he got this sentimental.

In Houston he calls Sam. “You got the guy’s name?”

“Yeah. Lawrence Tulsey. Apparently Dad saved his life a couple of times, ‘cause he’ll only talk to you. Guess you’re gonna have to leave Jake on the homestead.”

“Jake isn’t with me.”

Sam pauses and then asks carefully, “Cut him loose?”

“Naw, he’s just visiting family, catch up with me later. So where is this guy?”

 

Tulsey is hard to miss. The waitresses cut him a wide berth but Dean slides right into the booth. Tulsey turns his head slightly to one side; he’s only got the one eye left. 

Dean drinks the glass of holy water Tulsey nudges across to him, cuts his finger with the small silver knife, tastes the salt, touches the cross. The old ones always get cautious… or maybe it’s the other way around. They get old _because_ they’re cautious. 

“Got something you should look into,” Tulsey says without introduction. “Hasn’t got a name. Not in any of the books. Your daddy… he ran across me when I was starting out. Taught me a few things, what kept me alive. Maybe he taught you the same things.”

Dean keeps his mouth shut, lets the guy make up his own mind. 

“Ten years back I got a call from a contact of mine in San Antonio. Said he’d run into something that he couldn’t handle, wanted me to take over. Wasn’t a demon, he said, wasn’t anything he knew. It hunts at night… hunts people. Especially kids.” He swallows. “Likes kids, teenagers. Takes them, tortures them.

“On the way there I picked up a hitchhiker. Girl, musta been about 20. Planned on using her as bait.” He meets Dean’s eyes, looking for recrimination. Dean gives him none. “I took her out near where it’d been hunting. Got a couple beers in her, waited.

“They came around midnight. Didn’t have any warning, they were just _there_ , right at the truck’s window. Looked like men, except _grey_ , wore black. About thirty of ‘em. I shot one and it didn’t try to dodge or nothin’, just went down. All the others looking on like it was nothing, blank faces. The girl freaked out at the gun, started screaming apeshit, and that brought them right around. They all smiled.”

Tulsey stopped there, drew in a short breath. “They had these great big smiles, damn near split their faces in two. I shot a couple more before they broke my gun in half. Took my knife away and one of the fuckers cut my eye right out, laughing. They talked all through it to us, how they were gonna eat our bodies while we were still alive, shit like that. The girl was screaming… I could see her, stripped naked… what they were doin’ to her. I put up hard but they knocked me down. One of ‘em bites me.” 

The old man rolls up his sleeve, shows Dean the scar. It’s circular, like a set of human teeth… except for one larger mark on the right side. Tulsey flicks it with a thumb.

“Fang, just the one. Had some kinda poison in it ‘cause I went limp, couldn’t move. Woke up a few minutes later and they’d gone. Just like that. Took the girl, left me lying there. Don’t know how I made it to the hospital.

“Couple weeks later I headed back out. Took me a while – ain’t much to track – but I found the nest of ‘em, in a barn. Broad daylight and they were asleep, ‘bout fifty, folded up in cocoons. They had the girl tied down. I set fire to the nest, carried her out. Left her at the hospital.”

The man’s tone is absolutely flat. A decade, he’s waited to say this. Dean asks, “You think they’ve come back?”

Tulsey nods just the once. “Haven’t in ten years. I’ve kept an eye on the area. Sounds like a dozen at the most. But they’re comin’ into towns, houses, grabbin’ people in the night.”

“Getting desperate.”

“My guess.”

“Weapons?”

“Anything’ll do, far as I know. The one I shot stayed down. It’s when they get fear in their blood, they turn fuckin’ indestructible. It lights ‘em up. Don’t know what can take them out then, if anything. But you get someone that ain’t afraid,” and he looks into Dean’s two eyes with his one, “and they fall like flies.”

 

Dean’s just pulled into a godforsaken motel lot beyond the edge of town when his phone jumps. “Yeah?”

“Where you at?” the kid practically spits.

“Outside Palestine.”

Five hours later and he’s there, materializing out of thin air in the parking lot, duffel bag slung across his shoulder, white T-shirt and sun-browned skin. Dean gets closer and reads tension in his body. “Family trouble?”

“Fuck you,” Jake snaps.

The parking lot’s dark and still with dusk, so Dean snakes a hand into the kid’s hair, pulls. The little bastard winds up like he’s going to punch, but then there’s a mouth on his and knowing fingers hooked in the front of his belt. His shoulders unwind, his mouth opens and he goes where Dean wants him to go, easy as anything, easy as always.

When they step apart Dean’s a bit more breathless than he wants to admit. “Family trouble?” he starts over.

The kid laughs, teeth flashing in the near-dark. “Yeah. Ain’t nothin’ like one family reunion to remind you why you never have ‘em.”

Dean spent the last couple of days poking around town and he’s got some leads. There are two local girls missing and he’s noticed that the Grey Men don’t go near churches. But then the kid licks his lips and looks at Dean’s, _want_ still like a flashing billboard.

Dean swallows and tilts his head just a bit. The kid goes in that direction and Dean falls in step behind, doesn’t touch until they get inside the door. And then the kid goes wherever Dean wants, biting a shoulder when he’s pushed rough against the wall. He pushes back and that’s how they go, shoving and pulling until they find the places in each other’s bodies where they fit together. 

The carpet’s stained and worn but Jake doesn’t as when he’s ground into it again and again, jeans only half off and boxers pushed down onto his hips. His tank top’s rucked up around his shoulders and Dean bends, licks a line straight across one hard nipple. 

Jake arches and gives up with a gasp, coming into Dean’s hand.

Twenty minutes later, with Dean still easing down from his own high, Jake asks, “Any good place to drink ‘round here?”

Eyes closed, Dean chuckles. “Boy, you got a two-track mind.”

“Damn straight, old man.”

Dean groans as he sits up, pulls clothing back into place. Beside him Jake is a little slower and Dean notices some fresh bruises. He hadn’t before, and dammit he’d driven the kid down pretty hard. Jake catches the look, shakes his head. “Ain’t an Earle family reunion ‘til someone’s on the floor.” He grins, cocky and young. “Least it wasn’t my turn this time.”

Dean grunts, stands up. “Place next door’s got cheap beer and pool. Get your skinny butt up and I’ll hand it to you, best two out of three.”

The night air’s warm with promise and Dean breathes it in, feels the looseness in his chest. There’d been something tight there all week, but it had vanished the moment he’d closed a hand around the kid’s dick and felt him buck convulsively. Half-lidded eyes on Dean’s face and a ghost of laughter on his open lips.

He’s caught up in the memory and half-hard again, so it’s a tough transition to make when he looks up and sees the grey figure standing not twenty feet away. 

For a second Dean blinks. But it’s definitely there: a tall thin human-looking thing dressed in shabby dark clothing. Grey skin and colorless eyes, it stares at Dean. Sways very slightly in place and looks like it might fall down any moment.

Adrenaline spikes through Dean’s veins, but he clamps down hard, doesn’t let it go beyond that. The thing looks weak as hell, but all it needs is one good burst of fear…

The door shuts behind Dean and boots tread out onto the parking lot’s gravel. Then they scuff short. “Jake,” Dean says very quietly. “Go back inside and get a shotgun.”

The kid doesn’t answer. Dean watches as the thing’s wandering eyes move slowly past him. He risks taking his gaze off it for just a moment and turns. “Dammit, J – ”

The kid is white. It’s hard to see in the orange neon glow, but Dean is certain there isn’t an ounce of blood on his face. His wide eyes do not see Dean, fixed on the thing, and he’s unmoving as a statue.

Behind Dean, the thing says “ _Jacob_ ” in a voice of pure delight.

He whips back around in time to see the skin of the thing’s face come to life, pulling back into a grotesque grin. “Oh, _Jacob_ ,” it says high and sing-song, “you’ve come _back_ to us.”

Jake says “No,” and keeps saying it.

Gravel scuffs around them and the others come out of the night, all twisted smiles and reaching fingers. Dean yanks out his Colt, shoots one in the head but they barely flinch. They take the Colt away and then he’s down just like that, choking to breathe around the hits they lay into his ribs.

Jake shouting now, hoarse. Dean clutches at the gravel and twists to look. The kid’s swinging wild at the five, six – _shit_ – seven creatures closing in around him. But they’ve already got long fingers on him, holding his arms, pulling at his clothes…

Something turns in Dean’s stomach and he squeezes his hands into fists. He can’t feel fear. Jake’s got enough right now for them both; if Dean joins him, they’ve got no shot.

He closes his eyes and shuts his ears, curling up into a defensive ball against the blows aimed at his head and torso. The Grey Men snarl in his ears about what they’re going to do to the kid. How they’re going to find Dean’s girls, his two beautiful tasty daughters, and rape them too, peel the skin from Sam’s body.

Dean shuts his mind up tight and waits.

It doesn’t take long, not when the kid is a screaming ball of fear and they’re so damn hungry. They’re drawn away and when Dean raises his head there’s just one standing over him, smiling horribly.

He looks into the thing’s eyes and remembers churches, where these things will not go. Where the flock gather to lift their arms, certain of the world and their place in it. No uncertainty. No fear.

Dean begins, “Our Father, who art in Heaven.”

It recoils lightning-fast and Dean feels a surge of something completely unlike fear. “Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

They’re all hissing now like a bed of snakes. Dean hauls himself upright and fights back the urge to vomit, grinding the words out of his raw throat. “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses,” he bends down and picks up his Colt, discarded on the ground, aims it, “as we forgive those motherfuckers who trespass against us.”

They’re still lively enough to try dodging. But Dean’s stone-cold steady, doesn’t waver or pause, not even when someone runs past him, boots scrabbling on the gravel. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” He shoots and shoots and reloads and shoots. “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

Thirteen grey husks lie around him and the kid is gone.

 

Dean blows out of the hotel fast before the cops get there. Grabs the kid’s duffel along with his own stuff and tosses everything in the truck.

“Hello?”

“This is Dean Winchester. Give the phone to Tom right now.”

She doesn’t hesitate, Dean can credit her that much. “Hello?”

“Tom. This is Dean. Ten years ago, did the Grey Men take Jake?”

Tom breathes like paper torn in half, takes the phone away from his ear. “Stop the fucking truck,” Dean hears him shouting. Some movement and the fast crunch of gravel. He’s getting away from the others. “How?” he finally gasps into the phone.

“We met them tonight.”

“Oh, God. Jake – is he – ”

Dean hears the terror in his voice, knows he can’t let any of them near. “Tell me. Now.”

“They – they took him from the house,” Tom chokes. “We were all hunting, but Jake… he was thirteen, so we left him at home.”

Dean cracks for one moment, closes his eyes. “How long did they have him?”

“Four days. Dad and I, we were the ones that found him. No one else knew, no one else – _s-saw_ , Dad made me swear…”

Dean hangs up the phone. It rings almost instantly and he switches it off. He drives all night up and down back roads, circling wider and wider around the hotel.

When the sun’s coming up he finally sees a familiar back walking along the two-lane highway back towards town. He grips the steering wheel, holding on by his fingernails, and pulls over.

The kid stops on the side of the road. He’s filthy, clothes torn, but doesn’t look hurt bad. Dean puts one hand against the truck and holds himself up. “You alright?”

“Yeah.” Jake hesitates, then moves around to the other side of the truck, puts a hand on it. Mirrors Dean’s stance unconsciously. “You?”

“Yeah,” Dean responds hoarsely. His entire body feels like a bruise, nerves raw in the open air. He gets back in, drives fast out of town.

The kid beside him is silent and still. Dean grips the steering wheel and does not look.

 

Jake shuts himself in the bathroom, runs the shower for hours. Dean can’t complain. The fear and panic he held back all night comes ripping out and he sits down hard on the bed, hangs his head between his knees.

After a while he switches the light out, crawls on top of the comforter. Too sore and too worn out to even kick his boots off. His knees creak and for the first time he really feels his age.

The kid switches the bathroom light off before he finally comes out. Doesn’t go straight to bed and Dean hears the faint hiss of metal sliding free. 

He says into the darkness, “Guns worked.”

There’s a pause and then the kid gets a Colt, cocks it, takes it and the knife to bed with him.

 

-o-

 

 _I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',_  
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',  
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,  
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken.  
\-- Leon Russell

It takes Dean approximately a week to figure out that they’re completely fucked, when Jake stands right in front of a roaring wyvern and fires into its face rather than dodging. Which makes Dean throw himself at the kid’s shoulders, which makes Jake punch him in the face on the walk back to the truck.

Dean hits back out of reflex and they go down on the trail, scrabbling in the dirt. At some point the kid’s grappling changes and he pulls down, sending his tongue into Dean’s mouth and his hand down Dean’s pants like they’re still fighting. Dean groans reflexively and the kid fucking _whimpers_ , pleading. He’s got his eyes screwed up tight and Dean pulls away, grabs at his hands and holds them still. 

When the blue eyes open they’re bright with rage. The mouth twists into an ugly imitation of its familiar grin. “Whatsa matter, old man, can’t get it up for me anymore?”

The kid blanches before the words are even out of his mouth and the fight goes out of him. After a moment Dean pushes back, stands up and continues down the trail.

Eventually the kid follows, dirty hair hanging over his eyes. He doesn’t look at Dean, doesn’t speak. There’s a lot of silence in the truck cab and Dean holds onto the steering wheel for dear life, wondering which one of them will break first.

 

He’s half asleep when the door lurches open and the kid tumbles into the room wrapped up in a girl. They’re both laughing, sloppy drunk and the girl blinks owlishly in the light that Dean turns on. “Oh! My God, I didn’t see… Is this your dad?”

Jake guffaws, slides a hand up the front of her skirt. “Naw, he ain’t my dad. You mind givin’ us a while alone, friend?”

He smiles wide and fake at Dean, one hand practically inside the girl’s snatch. Dean looks back and feels a stab of something like hatred. It must show in his face because the kid’s expression changes, becomes something unidentifiable.

When Dean comes back an hour later the girl is gone. Jake lies in one of the beds, sheets tousled, staring up at the ceiling with blank eyes.

They haven’t fucked since that night with the wyvern. Dean looks away and turns out the light.

 

Dean makes his decision the next morning, knows they’re gonna tear each other apart and doesn’t know how to stop it. He _can’t_ stop it, dammit, he doesn’t know a damn thing to do here. He knows the gleam of a blade’s edge in moonlight and how to kill shadows without becoming one. But he has no idea how to put this kid back together.

It takes him a couple of days to get things fixed up and then he stands with his hands tense at his sides and says, “You’re going home.”

Sitting on the bed, the kid looks up. Not a speck of surprise on his face. He’s been expecting this. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” he says flatly.

Dean takes a deep breath. “Jake. You need to go home. Your family can help you better th – ”

He’s on his feet, hands fisted. “I don’t _need_ help, goddamn you! I don’t need any fuckin’ help! I’d be _fine_ if you’d stop lookin’ at me like a china plate!”

Dean fights to stay calm. Blue eyes bore into him, rage barely covering bone-deep hurt. “You’ve almost gotten yourself killed a dozen times in the last three weeks.”

“I’m a fucking _hunter_ , Dean!” Jake shouts. “It’s what I do! Whaddya, think I can’t? Fine, let’s go back – ” his voice stumbles “ – back to Palestine, and I’ll kill every last one of those Joker-faced fuckers. Fuck you, let’s go.”

Dean swallows and says, “No. I’m not hunting with you anymore.” The kid’s eyelids flinch at the words, struggling. “I’m not going to hang around and watch while you get your head ripped off to prove something. You’re going home.”

And just like that, something switches off. The kid stands there with his hands at his sides and shuts down completely.

Dean can see it, he can fucking _watch_ while the lights flicker out one by one, going dark and empty. He sucks in a breath and turns away, lifts his bags with unsteady hands. “I’ve got you a bus ticket for tomorrow morning.”

The kid stands there, then goes over and sits back down on the bed.

This is the only thing Dean can think to do, but damn if it doesn’t taste bitter. Dean stares at the back of the kid’s bowed head, at the place where his growing hair curls on the nape of his neck. 

 

The silence in the cab is different, emptiness instead of tension. Dean drives to the bus station through a steady drizzle, wiper blades on. Jake says nothing, traces raindrops on the window with his fingers. 

When he stops the truck the kid gets out without a word, shoulders his duffel and shuts the door.

Dean, alone in the cab, slowly puts his foot down on the gas. In the rearview mirror the kid’s face follows the truck as it rolls away, shoulders hunched underneath his jacket and collar pulled up against the rain.

 

Dean counts the miles and waits to two hundred before he calls Tulsey. “Nailed thirteen of the fuckers. You pretty sure about the count?”

“Close to sure. I’ll keep my ear to the ground, though.” The rough voice has a catch in it, the weight of ten years being lifted. “You done good, Winchester.”

Dean should leave it alone but can’t. “Ten years ago, your contact in San Antonio. Was it Caleb Earle?”

“Yeah, yeah it was. Why do you ask?”

“His youngest kid, Jake. He was in on the hunt with me.”

Tulsey grunts in surprise. “You’re shittin’ me. That little pissant turned out to be a hunter after all?”

Dean wants to snarl but stops himself just in time. “What do you mean, ‘after all’?”

“Well, shit. Ain’t an Earle alive and some’s that dead who don’t hunt except for him. He musta been pretty damn worthless if even Caleb wouldn’t train ‘im.”

Dean brakes so hard the truck fishtails on wet pavement.

Very carefully he hangs up the phone and takes three very careful deep breaths. 

Then he picks it up again, dials.

“Winchester?”

“Give the phone to Tom.”

A quick mumble of voices and then Tom’s thin voice says, “Tell me Jake is okay.”

“He’s fine. Why didn’t Caleb ever teach Jake to hunt?”

“Where is he?”

“Why didn’t Caleb ever teach Jake to hunt?”

“He _couldn’t_ , okay!” Tom practically shrieks. “Not after what happened. He loved Jake, it tore him apart, _they_ tore him apart and Dad – he just wanted him _safe_ , godammit…”

Dean hangs up again. Horns honk on either side and he curses Caleb Earle’s broken heart for letting Jake believe he was broken, unfixable, _worthless_. And he curses himself, for having just done the same goddamned thing.

 

The kid’s about thirty feet from where Dean left him. He’s tucked under the station’s awning, curled up as tight as he’ll go with his back against the wall and rain dripping on the toes of his boots.

Dean leans down and taps the kid’s knee, almost gets a kick in the groin as he flails awake. Blue eyes stare up out of rain-dark hair, see Dean, and go wide. He gets up slow, one hand on the wall, not leaving Dean’s face.

Dean’s crap at apologies, so the only one the kid gets is that Dean lets him throw the first punch. He does it fast and vicious, connecting hard, and then he’s screaming, “You sonofabitch, _you sonofabitch_ , I’ll kill you…”

He doesn’t quite, but not from lack of trying. He winds up on top, but Dean has the kid’s forearms locked across his chest, sharp elbows digging into his ribs. Jake barely seems to notice. Rain falls over his back and drips off his face onto Dean’s, just a few inches between. “You sonofabitch,” Jake chokes, words stumbling over his bleeding lip and a bit of red drips down onto Dean’s cheek, too. “You don’t do that, you don’t _ever do that again_ or I swear t’God I’ll _kill_ you …”

“Alright,” Dean agrees calmly. His nose is bleeding, feels half-broke. He lets go of the kid slowly and drops his arms to either side. Looks into Jake’s torn-up eyes and says, “Alright.”

Jake glares, can’t unwind ten years of belief drilled into his bones. But someone’s shouting in alarm and necessity gets them both upright and into the truck. 

The kid stays pinned against the passenger door as they peel out and when Dean looks over he’s got his face averted, eyes screwed shut. He stays like that past the two hundred mile mark, three hundred, four hundred as Dean puts as much distance as possible between them and the Texarkana Greyhound station.

Dean’s got no plan, no idea of how either one of them is going to survive this. He’s driving with the brakes off now, so when he starts to see double and pulls over on some scenic turnout, he reaches over and slides his fingers into the kid’s damp hair.

His banged-up lip tastes like copper. Dean takes it in his mouth, easing around the cut with his tongue to go deeper. Jake resists a moment and Dean can taste his anger, too, and the metal tang of desperation. But then the mouth against his open wider and a hand curls on the back of his neck, pulling Dean in, holding him there. 

Dean closes his eyes and thinks about how after all that, he broke first.

 

-o-

 __  
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing  
 _I heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter_.  
\-- Leon Russell

The next two months are simple unmitigated hell. 

The kid alternates between trying to crawl inside Dean’s skin and spitting in his face. They trade hits a half dozen times, the worst of which is a tequila-fueled brawl in Paducah that lands them both in the drunk tank for a night. 

They go to opposite ends of the cell and studiously ignore each other until some fellow drunk, a tattooed giant, stands over Jake and grins while unzipping his fly.

Dean breaks the fucker’s jaw. They hold him another day but as luck turns out the guard had been AWOL from his post, getting his dick sucked by a hooker in the supply closet. A few threats of lawsuit later and Dean walks out into the parking lot.

Jake’s waiting in the truck, half his face banged up and a sullen set to the other half. Dean kinda prefers the drunk tank, but he climbs grimly into the cab. “You anybody’s bitch yet?” the kid asks as greeting.

Dean slides his sunglasses on. “Boy, if you don’t shut up three seconds ago I’m wrapping this truck around a fucking telephone pole.”

Jake laughs as Dean turns the key. “I’ll race you there, friend.”

 

The next week Dean says “Ok, ok, ok” through his teeth while he tries to stop up the bleeding holes in the kid’s back.

It hadn’t even been a nasty hunt, just a hobgoblin stealing local kids. But in the middle of the fight, Dean had looked for the kid instead of the goblin and almost gotten his neck torn out. Jake kept his head a little better, so it’s his back bleeding instead, and he bites down hard on his sleeve, grunting and twitching as Dean dresses his wounds.

When the blood slows to a trickle Dean sits back, wipes the sweat from his brow and critically examines his handiwork. There’ll be new scars to go with the others.

His eyes fall on one scar in particular, low on the kid’s broad back. It’s white with age but distinct: a round circular wound, almost but not quite like a human bite.

Dean had always known it was there but had never _known_. He stares a moment, then looks away.

“You done yet?” growls Jake’s raw voice. “Or just admiring the fucking view?”

 

Dean takes off that night, finds a girl, finds two girls, introduces them, fucks them both fast and dirty like a back alley handshake. It’s relief more than pleasure, frustration trying to unravel itself as he buries himself in a tight cunt and doesn’t come up for air until they’re both shuddering with release.

Jake’s still awake when he gets back, sitting at the hotel table playing solitaire and drinking a beer. Dean wants to bitch at him for mixing alcohol with painkillers but the kid’s holding himself real stiff, back probably too fucked up to lie down. He flicks a drugged-out glance in Dean’s direction. “Here’s hopin’ one of us got lucky tonight, friend.”

Dean groans as he sits down in the other chair. After a moment he leans over, takes a sip of the beer. He sees the knife and the gun in Jake’s lap and knows that it isn’t the wounds on his back keeping the kid up.

 

By the end of the second month, Dean’s got new respect (or at least a whole lot less hatred) for Caleb Earle. The man may have protected Jake straight into a massive inferiority complex, but Dean’s not too sure anymore that the alternative is any better.

Specifically, he’s not too sure that he’s not going to kill the little fucker right here in this bar. Right where he’s standing, arms folded, leaning back against the bar, grinning. Exhaustion has Dean stretched thin like a wire that Jake’s been plucking at all night. He’s spent the last week pissed off and hard, and right now, with cheap whiskey pumping through his veins, he’s kinda inclined to do something about both those problems.

So he gets up, closes a hand on the back of the kid’s neck and fucking _drags_ him from the building.

 

Outside in the dark he pins Jake against the dirty stucco wall, traps both his hands above his head with one of his own, and shoves a thigh between the kid’s legs. “Alright, fine,” he says low and furious. “You want it this way, you got it.”

He’s got approximately one ounce of sense screaming that this is a really fucking dumb but then the kid moves into him just a little and Dean snarls, steps back and yanks him away from the wall so hard that Jake skids across the gravel on his hands and knees.

 

By the time they get back to the hotel room the kid’s fighting back or fighting _with_. His blunt nails scratch at Dean’s arms, biting his skin. His teeth do, too, at least until Dean grabs a handful of hair and pulls the kid’s head back so they’re face to face, breathing hard into each other.

Dean gets some oxygen into his lungs. He holds the kid’s head captive, bent back sharp on his neck, and gives it one good shake. “You want it this way?” he growls again.

Jake doesn’t answer, but chokes a little laugh and wrenches at Dean’s belt. Which is enough of an answer for Dean. He’s bigger by about thirty pounds and backs the stumbling kid into the bed.

 

Jake doesn’t make a sound when Dean thrusts hard and deep. Just exhales once, goes tense as fine steel. Dean grits his teeth, drives into that tightness, rage cooked up with alcohol and spiced with despair.

Chasing that fine sharp edge toward release, Dean looks down just as the first wave hits him and sees the white circle on the kid’s back. He almost chokes on his own tongue, but he’s already gone, body shuddering. The kid’s coming with him, moaning strangled curses.

 

Later, with the kid asleep or pretending to sleep underneath him, Dean knows what he’s got to do. He’s not sure it’s gonna work: if it doesn’t, he’s pretty sure the kid’s either gonna shoot him or take off.

Dean’s not sure which option he prefers.

 

Dean waits until the next time they’re in a bar. The kid’s tossing back shots to toast every fachen they took down earlier. “Ugliest sonzabitches I’ve ever seen,” he says, and laughs. “God musta been drunk and high when he made those dumb chickens.”

Dean takes a long slow pull of beer and watches the football game playing on TV. _Want_ pulls at him, though, and he looks over. The kid’s blue eyes burn hard and bright and slightly unfocused. _Want_ looking back at Dean, but tangled up with so much other crap. Dean reaches out, takes one of the shots, knocks it back. “Bet you look real damn ugly to them, too.”

“Aw, fuck ‘em.” He puts a hand against Dean’s shoulder, uses it to haul himself upright. “Gotta take a leak.”

Dean only shrugs, goes back to the game. Jake staggers off.

Dean waits, his heart beating fast.

He puts down the bottle and gets up to follow the kid.

 

“Hey, what the fuck?” Jake shouts when the light in the bathroom goes out suddenly. He curses and Dean can hear him zip up.

Dean turns on his best imitation of the Grey Men and says “ _Jacob_.”

There’s an explosion of breath in the dark and the sharp scuffle of boots across the floor. Skin smacks on tile and the kid pants, scrabbling across the far wall away from Dean. Searching for a way out, a way to run. Dean hears him hit the corner and grits his teeth.

The kid begins to stammer, “The Lord is my shepherd…”

“Good,” Dean says flat and calm. “Not quick enough, but good. Any kind of prayer would do fine, doesn’t have to be Christian. It’s a last resort, though, if you’ve lost all your weapons. You got any on you?” He waits, hands clenched.

After a minute Jake says unsteadily, “Knife.”

“Won’t do you much good. They’re some kind of psi-vamps… weird type, probably evolved in isolation. Headshot with a gun works. So would a beheading, but machetes attract attention, harder to carry. Fire’s no good for combat, but if you find their nest, that’ll take it out.”

He waits a moment, then reaches out, flicks on the light. The kid squints, still standing near the far corner. He looks sheet-white and so, so young.

Dean goes out and gets truly drunk then, works through a whole line of tequila shots before Jake even comes out of the bathroom. He slams an empty shot glass down and glares dark at the kid, daring him. 

Jake’s still pale and his hands are jammed way down in his pockets. But his jaw has a stubborn set about it, a look Dean knows. 

The kid sits down slowly and they knock back a shot in unison, watch the game. 

“They were some _ugly_ fucking birds,” Dean says eventually.

The kid laughs, shaky and defiant. He still won’t look at Dean. But he isn’t running and right now, with most of his body going numb, Dean’ll take what he can get.

 

-o-

 

 _What’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?_  
 _What’ll you do now, my darling young one?_  
\-- Leon Russell

A black dog in Michigan turns out to be three. Dean’s fast, but he’s 53 goddamned years old and has to back-pedal while reloading. Then the kid shoots from where he’s lying on the ground and buys Dean a half-second of grace, which is enough.

“God _damn_ ,” Jake says wearily after the shotgun’s echoes fade. “Friend, I think it’s your turn to do stitches.”

 

A succubus in New Hampshire makes Jake’s hands shake. Teeth and claws he can handle, even likes in a dumb-ass sort of way. But something poking around inside his head brings up every hackle on his back. 

They have it out again after the hunt, slugging each other in a snowy parking lot. Dean can tell the kid wants to be fucked like before, but he _will not_ go down that slippery slope again. So they beat the shit out of one another instead, stopping only when neither can stand and they lean shoulder-to-shoulder, dirty slush freezing their knees.

Jake spits blood. “Shit on a stick. Think you knocked one of my teeth loose.”

Dean groans, drags himself and the kid upright. “Merry Christmas, you little fuck.”

 

They’re stranded during a blizzard in Oklahoma before Dean finally gets his nerve together.  
The hotel is packed, travelers crawling over each other for a room. Dean discreetly slips the clerk triple the asking price and they get a decent single. Just one bed, with a nice headboard, a kind of sturdy oak somebody (but not Dean) might call “rustic.”

He bought the rope a while ago, had it in the back wrapped up. Some special kind. It’s been sitting in the truck for weeks like a question mark he hasn’t had the guts to answer.

When Jake gets back from the liquor store across the street, Dean’s sitting on in the motel’s chair with elbows braced on his knees and hands clasped between. The kid forces the door shut behind him and shakes snow from his coat. “Sheee-it. It’s the end of days out there, friend, hope you’ve got a Bible.”

He grins wide, shivering. His damp outer jacket goes on the chair opposite Dean and he pops a beer off the six-pack ring, hands it over. Takes one for himself, cracks it open, takes a long fortifying slug.

Dean’s expecting it, but his stomach still clenches when Jake looks over and sees the ropes. Everything in the kid stops moving suddenly, a complete freeze except for the way his smile evaporates.

He looks back, blue eyes cracked wide open.

Dean sets his beer aside on the table, doesn’t move beyond that. “Take off your clothes and lie down on the bed.”

Jake musters a shaky smile. “You getting’ freaky on me?” After a minute he swallows, puts his beer down beside Dean’s. “This some kinda test?” 

Dean doesn’t reply. Words aren’t gonna do a damn thing. Jake studies him, looks at the lines on his face, his weathered hands. He licks his lips and says softly, “Christo.”

Dean hadn’t even thought about that, but damn. The kid steps back as Dean carefully stands. He walks over to his pack on the floor, takes out holy water and salt. Tastes, sips under watchful eyes. “No demon, kid. Just me.”

Jake licks his lips again. “I got nothing to prove to you,” he husks, bravado and fear.

“No,” Dean says, putting away the supplies. “No, you don’t.”

He crouches on the floor. The kid shifts back and forth, rocking on feet that want to run. Dean half-expects him to, but then Jake swears and peels off his damp jacket. “Fuck. Alright.” Hair falls in his face as he bends to unlace his boots.

Dean blinks and looks away, goes to stand by the bathroom, as far away from Jake as he can get, and fixes his gaze on the doorjamb. Boots thump on the carpet, kicked off, and he hears a zipper. He thinks about how if this goes wrong, the kid’s gonna put a bullet through one of their heads.

Jake says, “Alright.” He’s sitting on the bed, pale. 

Dean reaches out, flicks off the bedroom light.

In darkness he can sense the kid’s head tracking him as he goes back to his pack, takes out the needle and vial. Jake doesn’t speak when the needle pricks his skin, but he shivers under Dean’s fingers.

Dean sets the empty needle down beside their beers, finds the chair and waits, listening to the kid’s unsteady breathing.

The building creaks in a hard gust. Jake laughs, a frayed, ragged sound. “If I wake up without kidneys, friend, I’m cutting out yours.”

There’s fear and bravado, and then there’s stubborn resilience. Dean smiles and prays the kid’s got enough. “That’s a deal.”

The bed springs creak and the kid’s breath changes, gets deeper in his chest as the drug takes hold. “Dean?” he husks, and the thin word raises hairs on Dean’s neck.

“Easy, kid,” he says gruffly. Jake moans faintly, fear rushing in too late as he slips away.

Dean waits five more minutes. Then he gets up, moves over to the bed.

 

He touches as little as possible, rolling the kid over onto his stomach and pulling limp arms straight above his head. The rope is slippery between his fingers, but pulls tight against Jake’s wrists and ankles, unbreakable.

The kid’s back rises and falls with his breath and the skin underneath Dean’s hands is soft with sleep. Dean glances at his face and regrets it, feels it turn in his belly like a knife. Dirty blonde hair has fallen across the kid’s brow, ruffled with his breath. He’s young, so young, open and helpless. Everything he hates, that he’s tried so hard to make Dean beat out of him.

When he’s done, Dean goes back over to the table to sit and wait, steeling himself for the next part.

 

It’s about half an hour before the kid starts to wake up, breath hitching as he breaks through drugged sleep. Dean listens to the sturdy bed frame creaks a bit as Jake pulls at his arms and draws up short with a small, muffled noise of confusion.

Dean screws up every ounce of courage from the bottom of his feet to the crown of his head, and says softly, “ _Jacob_.”

The kid gives a high, thin cry, an animal noise of terror. The ropes yank again, but hold.

Dean stands, grateful that it’s too dark to see the kid or himself. He leans over the bed and says low and singsong, “ _You’re home, Jacob. You’re back with us_.”

He finds the scar on the kid’s back. Doesn’t bite him, but drives his nails into the circular wound.

Jake goes rigid and sucks in a breath like shattering glass.

“Jake,” Dean says, in his own voice. “It’s Dean. Listen to me.”

The stiff muscles do not relax, but Dean goes on, still with his fingers dug into the kid’s back. “You’ve got six hours. They hibernate during daylight. No one’s going to help you. No one’s going to save you, not your dad, not Tom, not me. You’ve got six hours to get out of this.”

Then he lets go and practically collapses back into the chair.

 

About twenty minutes pass before the kid starts to move. His breathing is still labored, drugs pumping hard through his veins. The headboard creaks again, but not the frantic yanking of before, a slower pull that tests the ropes.

The movement pauses for a long moment and then begins again, a little different. With purpose. Dean can barely see him turn over, twisting around onto his side, leaning one shoulder back further and further.

“Jake,” Dean says sharply. The hunter in him can’t quite bear to remain silent. “Which hand do you shoot with?”

The shoulder halts its progress, pauses, and then drops. The kid rolls over onto the other one, straining. Dean’s fingers clench each other painfully.

Finally, there’s the faintest pop as the kid’s left thumb dislocates. He gasps and goes still for a moment, panting. Then his arms begin to move across the sheets, wriggling, twisting, pulling.

By the time he gets his hand free, Dean’s lost all track of time. He sits in the dark, eyes closed, waiting.

 

It takes the kid three hours. Dean’s in the bathroom with the door open, just standing there, when he hears the last rope hit the floor and the springs creak.

He raises his eyes and finds the kid with his back against the headboard, head bowed, breathing like a diver breaking the surface.

Dean flicks on the bathroom light and walks out into the bedroom. The kid looks up, but Dean keeps his eyes away, picks up his wallet from the dresser. “Take a shower, get cleaned up,” he says, and walks out into the blizzard without a jacket.

 

He’s probably drunker than he’s ever been in his life, but old tracking instincts lead him back through the icy cold.

The room smells like sweat and musk and _Jake_ , and Dean stands there breathing it in for a long moment before the kid says in the dark, “Jesus fuck, Dean, shut the damn door.”

Dean blinks and obeys, stands there dumbly swaying.

Hands touch his face. “What’d you, take a bath in tequila?”

Dean licks his frozen lips. “Think I drunk haf th’bar.”

Jake laughs a little, strained but genuine. Dean follows his hands like a blind dog, staggering a bit. He doesn’t so much fall on the bed as it rises up to catch him.

The mattress dips and then the kid lies down next to him, shoulder to shoulder.

They listen to the wind howl outside.

Jake says softly, wearily, “Je-sus _Christ_.”

Dean doesn’t argue.

 

-o-

 

 _I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,_  
 _Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,_  
 _Where the pellets of poison are flooding the waters,_  
 _But I’ll know my song well and I sure won’t forget it._  
\-- Leon Russell

They head west, where the song called to young men. Dean is not a young man: he’s 53 years old, got more gray than blonde in his hair, more scars than skin.

But he’s got a young man with him, whose hair still hangs too long and whose eyes are still blue. And the kid’s strong, stronger than Dean, but he can’t go alone.

So they drive west, chasing the sun down the horizon.

Jake’s been quiet and sometimes Dean sees him looking out over the earth with eyes narrowed against the sun, a million miles away. Moments like that make Dean’s fingers stutter and feet stumble, and he wonders how much he’s lost, what he’s sacrificed.

They haven’t touched since the blizzard, not fought, not fucked, nothing. Dean doesn’t because the kid doesn’t. Why the kid doesn’t keeps Dean awake at night.

 

Thankfully, Dean gets mugged. It happens one night after a nasty bugbear in Idaho left claw marks down his back and took a bite out of Jake’s leg. It’d taken stitches and Dean had administered painkillers, trying very hard not to think about the last time he put a needle in the kid’s arm.

So the kid’s out and Dean’s restless, finally decides to drive an hour to Coeur D’Alene and see if Danny Hislop still sells weapons out the back of his mechanic shop.

Danny Hislop isn’t there, but a meth lab is. Dean knows he’s getting old when four ordinary humans knock him down, beat the crap out of him, and take his fucking truck.

It takes him twelve hours to find them. Jacked up on meth, they gape in astonishment at the beaten-up old man who breaks their door down and kills two of them with a knife before they even know he’s in the building. Dean blows up the lab with the other two inside and barely manages to feel bad about it as he drives off, especially when he finds come stains on the seat.

Driving back is hell on earth and all he wants to do is take a long hot shower and sleep for several days. But then he walks in the door and the kid isn’t there. Totally gone, not even his duffel bag.

Dean goes back to the truck, starts circling through the streets of Boise. The farther out he goes from the hotel, the whiter his knuckles get on the steering wheel. He’d almost wish for a demon at this point, except for the missing duffel bag. He can’t think of anything supernatural that would be interested in the kid’s dirty clothes. Dean thinks of blue eyes gone distant and feels sick.

He’s just starting to slow down, heart in his heels and the empty road closing around him when a familiar shaggy head leans out from beside a stop sign, looking through the truck’s windshield at him. Dean has to focus on breathing as he stares at the kid on the sidewalk.

Jake stares back, relief changing to anger and he turns away sharply.

Belatedly, Dean realizes that he never unpacked his bag from the back of the truck, and that the kid woke up alone in an empty room almost 24 hours ago. And that last time, he was the one who left.

They’re right on the outskirts of town, the kid’s hunched back framed against an open Idaho horizon. Dean has to jog to catch up. “Godammit, boy, get the fuck back here.”

Jake spins, mouth open, but then stops. “What the fuck happened to you?”

Dean leans against his knees a moment, arm held across his chest. “Goddamned meth dealers is what happened. Went up to Coeur D’Alene to stock up on ammo, stayed for the beating.”

The kid closes his mouth into a tight line and looks away out over the prairie. Straightening up, Dean eyes him. “I wasn’t leaving.”

The kid’s mouth tightens and he ducks his head, kicks at the earth. It occurs to Dean that he’s embarrassed. That makes him smile just a little and makes it easier to ask, “Were you?”

The kid looks up sharply at that. A wind’s picked up and he pushes hair out of his eyes. “No,” he says after a minute, releasing that clench in Dean’s stomach. Then Jake smiles lopsidedly. “Naw, I was actually planning on tracking you down to kill you.”

He isn’t joking. Dean puts his head back and laughs. It’s murder on his ribs, but he’s too relieved not to. When he’s done, the smile on Jake’s face has spread a bit into something familiar, something that makes Dean’s stomach clench in an entirely different way.

Dean moves before he’s got time to think or talk himself out of it. He closes the distance between them and grabs a fistful of Jake’s shirt, pulls him in. The duffel bag hits gravel near their feet.

There isn’t any finesse or gentleness to it: Dean just puts his mouth against the kid’s, forces his lips open and dives inside. Slides an arm around the back of Jake’s head and holds him there.

And just like that, the kid goes where Dean wants, easy as always, easy as anything. Opens up and lets him in, presses back against his body.

Dean feels like laughing again, but is too busy tongue-fucking the kid’s mouth until they’re both out of oxygen and he has to break off just to breathe. He doesn’t move his arm, though, and they’re fitted together, breath ghosting in the cold air between them.

“If you ever leave me,” he says to the kid’s blue eyes, “I’ll track you down and kill _you_.”

The little punk laughs.

 

For once Dean doesn’t yell at the kid about staying on his side of the cab. Jake bites the side of Dean’s neck and he veers the truck off into a rest stop.

In the men’s bathroom he yanks the door shut with one hand, the other pulling at Jake’s zipper, fumbling aside jeans and boxers. Jake’s hands are on his belt, his zipper, and then on him, jerking his cock roughly.

Dean groans into the kid’s mouth. He reaches between them to lace their fingers, line their dicks up against each other. Jake’s hips buck into him. 

There’s a moment when Dean leans back, looks at the kid’s open mouth and blown-out eyes, and thinks he’s absolutely beautiful.

Then Jake’s yanking him back impatiently, pushing and pulling. His other hand slides up Dean’s shirt, scratches across his chest, flicks one hard nipple. Dean hisses and presses him against the dirty concrete wall

Something crashes loud against the stall door, making them both flinch. A mock-low voice shouts on the other side, “This is the police, open up, faggots!” followed by a peal of boyish laughter.

Dean kicks the stall door, smashing it outward. The three pimply-faced punks outside lose their grins when faced with the barrel of a Desert Eagle. Dean cocks the gun and says between his teeth, “ _Do. Not. Fuck with me right now_.” 

The boys freeze up, mouths open like a trio of fish. Beside Dean, against him, with him, Jake laughs breathlessly. “Friends, d’ya want some toilet paper? Ya’ll look like ya just shit yourselves.”

The rest room door slams shut behind them. Dean shoves the gun away and yanks the stall closed.

He turns around and Jake is _right fucking there_ , grabbing Dean’s ass and pulling him in, grinding them together. Dean chokes out a moan and just _shoves_ against the kid’s hip.

He only lasts a few hard thrusts. They come together, hands gripping and mouths gasping each other in.

 

They beat tracks before the cops get there, laughing about three fish-faced kids.

In the empty hotel room Dean nuzzles the curls on the back of the kid’s neck as he pushes inside. Jake groans against the pillow, the sound filled with _want_ and not a whisper of fear. 

So Dean closes his eyes and goes as deep as he can, choking on his own breath as their bodies fit together perfectly, tight, aching. Jake’s hand is on his shoulder, digging in and urging. “C’mon… fuck. _C’mon,_ Dean… oh, _fuck_. C’mon, _c’mon_ …”

Dean leans down and finds the kid’s mouth with his own as he moves harder. Completes the circuit, joins them in another place as he drives again and again into the kid’s body, one hand on his hipbone, pulling his hips back to meet every thrust. 

When Jake bites Dean’s lip he comes so hard he’s sure it’s going to kill him, burn him out. Distantly he hears the kid saying his name like he’s dying, too, and that’s okay ‘cause at least neither of them will have to outlive the other.

 

-o-

 

They head west. The West is for young men who don’t plan on living very long and end up surprised.

When they finally make it around to the ranch, Sam stands in the doorway as Jake shakes Kate’s hand in the living room. He looks sideways at Dean, all raised eyebrows and faint smile.

Dean flips him off and drops the kid’s duffel bag on the floor inside the threshold.


End file.
